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What about the fact that the gov't making it easy to get extremely cheap loans and/or grants contributing to inflation in college tuition? I mean it's a simple supply/demand curve. The gov't is increasing demand by allowing a lot more people to throw a lot more money at college. College tuition has increased astronomically compared with inflation over the past few decades. Anybody else see this as NOT a coincidence?

Maybe the real answer here is to stop making it so easy for kids to afford college so they have to actually consider there options, plan, and/or work hard instead of getting easy money up front and then being a slave to it later.

I disagree. I honestly don't think there's a scarcity of materials to provide for everyone's needs. The problem is, most people don't want just what they need. They want far, far more than they need. They want creature comforts, status symbols, etc. Thus people create a scarcity problem that otherwise wouldn't exist because they want as much as they can possibly consume (and often times even more than that).

But worse than that is people usually fight each other for really stupid reasons, that mostly boil down to tribalism. I would argue that WWI and WWII were all about tribalism. The gulf wars on their face may appear to be about economics (oil), but really they boiled down to tribalism, too. Some maniac wanted more power (hussein) so he decided to take some oil fields in kuait because money = power. not that he didn't have more than enough already, but whatever. Then the US intervened for 1) economic reasons (gotta preserve that oil supply) but also because they didn't really like this hussein character (tribalism).

So I mountain bike. Turns out these bikes have become more and more complicated, with more and more features, and I'm at the point where I don't really care about the latest carbon-fiber whatsathinger I just want to get on my bike and go, and have it not break. But when I need to fix the bike, or buy a new one, I've got to talk to sales people some of whom have a clue and some of whom don't.

Computers are like most other reasonably complex products - you've got to do your homework and never, ever trust that the salesperson knows what they are talking about. Because most don't, whether we're talking mountain bikes or personal computers.

This won't end well. I have an ARM device (nokia n810) and it's great. But Wintel monopoly will kill this just like it did Sparc and IBM Power. I'm sure if it's as good as they claim it'll carve out a niche, but it won't directly compete in numbers or presence with intel CPUs.

Now I'll grant you that filing this suit makes her look like a vacuous simp. But can we all agree that career services people at colleges are all a waste of time and money?

Seriously, my college career services interview basically ended up being a proof-reading of my resume (gee thanks) and a bit of crappy advice on how I need to network and should consider working part-time as an assistant manager at the Gap. The bastards don't even take their own advice - why aren't they out networking with companies HR departments to facilitate placements? Why can't they give lists of HR personnel that they've known and networked with to their graduates to help them get a leg up on the competition? Instead they offer only moderately useful mock interviews and resume advice.

Um, I pick my own docs, have never had any serious delays in getting treatment, nor has anyone else I know who's had more serious issues (from knee surgeries to cancer). More to the point, a cancer patient I knew changed docs several times, and had basically the best care the world has to offer, all under the U.S. system. And they weren't bill gates, they were average middle class folks.

My understanding is if you have one of the major insurers in the U.S., most doctors will accept your insurance and you can pretty much go anywhere you want. Obviously better docs have longer waiting lists but I fail to see how that would change under any system short of cloning.

As far as medical care goes, in the U.S. if you have private insurance there really is no better care you can get anywhere in the world, unless you are a billionaire and don't have to rely on insurance. It's the uninsured that are having issues in the U.S., and last I heard 95% of voters have insurance which is why, generally publically funded health care here is a non-starter.

Ah but you forget, the systems are connected by the most insecure component of all - people. If the people are fooled into pushing the shiney red button by misinformation delivered by the other systems, what does it matter?

My understanding from speaking with people who actually have practiced in both systems is that there really isn't much practical difference between a common law and a civil law system. In both cases, judges and attorneys look to previous cases with similar facts for guidance of what to do in present cases. The difference is the common law system pays greater lip service to following previous decisions, while still retaining almost full ability to not rely on them if it so chooses.

If you think about it, it really does make some sense - if you're a business trying to figure out how a law applies to your case, regardless of whether you're a civil law or common law system, wouldn't you look to what judges, juries, and officials have done in the past in similar circumstances?

I maintain that most of the hate directed toward lawyers and the legal system comes from 1) lack of understanding and 2) the few ridiculous fringe cases that make news but really don't represent the vast majority of legal work product

Not sure if this is done currently, but why not offer membership for businesses and individuals in some sort of open source foundation? Then the IT enterprises can pay some sort of nominal fee and at least give money back to a foundation that can then donate to worthy projects. And it would be tax-deductible as a business or trade membership. In return for membership, the org could offer a few basic services like a trade journal, consulting classifieds and/or matching consultants with enterprises who are looking for a particular solution.